I quit for now

[Qiubov]

Well, who has the full metrics ? Who decide if it's a success or not ?

Not you, not me, it's 2K Games.

The definition of success for them will depend of their expectations, and unless there was some miscommunication between them and Firaxis, they must have known the game was about to be released unfinished.

So I can't imagine either of them being very surprised by the players count and review scores, and I can't imagine them not having planned how to make money with the game for at least the next 2 years, despite those numbers.

We have numerous signals from Take-Two on how they define success.

On the 6th February, Take-Two released its financial report for the third quarter ended December 31, 2024. According to Take-Two President Karl Slatoff, Civilization VII set a “new franchise record for pre-orders, and player sentiment is extremely positive.” Karl also referred to Civ 7 as "the most anticipated game of 2025” and thanked the Firaxis team for once again challenging players around the world to “take one more turn”.

This strongly suggests that initial sales numbers are a core success metric for Take Two. It also suggests that strong player sentiment is a core success metric. And both are obviously connected - strong player sentiment drives sales.

And Take-Twos's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, two days after Civ 7 released:

“The Metacritic reviews are at 81, which is really solid. We have more than 20 press reviews with a score over 90. We have some negative outliers as well, including a 40 from Eurogamer. We think that as people play the game longer, the sentiment improves because with every launch of a new Civ, the team pushes the envelope a little bit and our legacy Civ audience is a little bit nervous about what they initially see and then they realize, wow, this is actually really incredible, and they dive in.

So we feel really, really good about it. We know we have a couple of issues. We have a bit of an issue with the UI, for example. We'll address that. So I wouldn't say the early access release is perfect in every way. I think it's very, very encouraging and I think the areas that are concerning are areas that we can and will address, and as you can tell, we're quite mindful of them.”

Zelnick references strong Metacritic reviews to validate the game has launched well, and even calls a negative Eurogamer review an 'outlier'. Then acknowledges that the 'legacy' Civ audience is a'little bit nervous' about the launch.

It's clear player sentiment, reviews, even forum discussions like these, are a key metric in the success defined by Take-Two.
Thus, those Steam reviews must be really hurting right now - because they translate directly into $$$

 

[Menocchio]

we'll have to agree to disagree



It's really not.

The only mental gymnastics currently occuring is you trying to pretend that failing to meet half the peak players of your direct preddessecor, having less players than a 15 year old game in the same series, and releasing to Mixed negative reviews is a success story and totally what 2K wanted to happen.

There are a couple of things here. The first is that your data's incomplete and insufficient—e.g. we have no information on overall sales, and current player numbers are unavailable for consoles—and the second is, overall: what's the point in debating the state of the game? We don't have any influence over publisher choices or developer decisions; we may purchase games but that doesn't make us consumer-citizens. What is your end goal here?

 

[Qiubov]

There are a couple of things here. The first is that your data's incomplete and insufficient—e.g. we have no information on overall sales, and current player numbers are unavailable for consoles—and the second is, overall: what's the point in debating the state of the game? We don't have any influence over publisher choices or developer decisions; we may purchase games but that doesn't make us consumer-citizens. What is your end goal here?

Firaxis have incredibly strong data points at their disposal. I've released many software products over the years but rarely do I have the opportunity of being able to access tens of thousands of player reviews - many written in a constructive and highly detailed way.

There is every reason to debate the state of a game. And forums like this are a goldmine for improving a product, and Firaxis/Two-Two will be reading this forum - just as any software company monitors customer sentiment when it releases a product. That feedback can be used to improve the product, benefitting both the customer (an improved product) and the company (sales).

 

[user746383]

At least nobody is claiming woke review bombing of an otherwise excellent game any more. That’s at least some progress.

 

[Menocchio]

Firaxis have incredibly strong data points at their disposal. I've released many software products over the years but rarely do I have the opportunity of being able to access tens of thousands of player reviews - many written in a constructive and highly detailed way.

There is every reason to debate the state of a game. And forums like this are a goldmine for improving a product, and Firaxis/Two-Two will be reading this forum - just as any software company monitors customer sentiment when it releases a product. That feedback can be used to improve the product, benefitting both the customer (an improved product) and the company (sales).

And yet they have even more data on their end—data which is unavailable to the purchaser, or discussants on an internet forum. Any meaningful discussion beyond sentiment is improbable without that, because it'd be like trying to discuss problems of physics without a knowledge of algebra.

The problem therein is that our ability as consumers to influence a product is vastly overestimated. We have no access to the process of production itself, no means by which to make a direct intervention beyond the site of consumption. While the developers certainly are monitoring these forums (and elsewhere)—they post here even—they have already said they are working on improving it. What more is there to say beyond that? If they improve it they will, and if they don't, they don't. We can continue to have these circular conversations that go nowhere, again because of our lack of access to production itself, and the limitations even of our language surrounding said production, or we can wait for things to actually happen.

As I've said before, these conversations don't reflect any actual ability to determine, in a direct and measurable way, our influence on game development. Instead it reflects both our anxieties about preferred consumer products—and our ability to anticipate them in the future—and more broadly, anxieties about our overall lack of agency in our political and economic lives. We argue about games and insist on our influence in a republic of consumers (Lizabeth Cohen, 2003) because we feel we lack an ability to affect the political factors that govern our lives, in a political economy fundamentally intertwined with consumer goods production. It will not necessarily go anywhere, but debating it online makes us feel like we are active players in a bigger economic ecosystem.

 

[Taefin]

I understand “quitting for now”, after trying out the game. And I know of the reasons folks have that make them able to resist putting off a purchase until a sale/expansion, but I cannot imagine myself hearing all we are about the game and waiting that long to try it.

For anyone on the fence, who is willing to get 100-200 hrs of enjoyment with the original iteration at full price, and not concerned about clunky UI preventing enjoyment, I suspect they will be pleasantly surprised how well the game’s new mechanics work together. As long as the possibility of eventually quitting for now is not a dealbreaker.

 

[Fluffball]

Thinking about buying this. Worth the $50? Been playing since Civ II, but the reviews are scaring me. I'm not against new things, but it sounds like it this game has challenges.

As someone who will happily put thousands of hours into games (including past civ games) i am bored with civ 7 after just over 100 hours.

It seems interesting to start with but once you understand the actual mechanics (usually having to use mods as the interface is appalling at giving you information) you realise the game is a shallow, low attention span box ticking game with no real depth and no real challenge.

Religion is pointless. You don't need to bother with adjacencies or optimize in any way to tick all boxes/win easily on any difficulty level. Your never actually in a race so don't feel pushed forward. The AI is passive and poses no challenge. Nothing really matters as it gets reset. Civs/leaders are uninspiring samey and boring...I always played the same game whatever leader I has, just sometimes I ticked boxes quicker with a different leader.

The only difficulty I found in this game is when I started I didn't know the mechanics and the game is bad at telling you. Once I figured it out it was easy.

I kept going up difficulty levels expecting it to be more challenging and it was just as easy.

Now I did get 100 hours out of it but I couldn't in good faith recommend it to others, especially at full price.

Add on to that day-7 DLC...I do mean -7 as DLC was being sold during the special early (or pay extra to beta test the game for us) release before the game was actually released. Already selling content that was/should have been base game but decided to milk players further when the game obviously wasn't even released finished, with a missing era, admitting the UI was unfinished etc.

 

[misesfan]

Zelnick references strong Metacritic reviews to validate the game has launched well, and even calls a negative Eurogamer review an 'outlier'. Then acknowledges that the 'legacy' Civ audience is a'little bit nervous' about the launch.

Companies need to build a game for the customer, not for the journalists/critics. I also think that games should be released in a polished, finished state. The DLC/patch mindset that has permeated this forum is astonishing. If Firaxis had developed a finished, polished game then these discussions would be moot and we would be fighting to give them our money for new stuff. As it is, I am not buying any new DLC for this game, it is simply a terrible product right now.

 

[stealth_nsk]

At least nobody is claiming woke review bombing of an otherwise excellent game any more. That’s at least some progress.

Nobody claimed it, as far as I remember. But yeah, I failed to prove I didn't write things I didn't write back then in many messages. Not going to continue.

 

[AD1730]

Nobody claimed it, as far as I remember. But yeah, I failed to prove I didn't write things I didn't write back then in many messages. Not going to continue.

No, plenty claimed it was happening.

 

[Stomper66]

I could sum up all the issues here but that has been done in other threads, you all know waht I am talking about.

What are the reasons you are talking about? I havnt bought the game and don't think I will as I've read enough to see it's not a satisfactory product. I'm also enjoying civ5 too much at the minute as it is a completely polished game with perfect mechanics in my opinion.

I think the games lack of Polish is mainly down to 3 reasons;

1) I think the game was rushed in development. Since covid there will have been too many people working from home and this has probably led to a lack of collaboration needed to make a civ game to the same high standard. Now things are returning to normal at work it was too early to release the product. Even the marketing was poor with the civ announcements done on x with 20 second video that didn't really show off anything about the civ.

2) I think humankind came out and firaxis got nervous about the competition. Humankinds usp was that you change civs throughout your playthrough and firaxis saw this as the new progressive way of designing turn based historical strategy games. Even the map and ui look like humankind. I didn't think this mechanic was right for civ where people want to lead the same civ and leader from the dawn of time into the future.

3) ignoring people who want to play in a historical setting and going all in on the random 'what if' style of play. Every civ doesn't get their own leader, something that civ5 and 6 took the time and effort to do, and the civ switching is done in a way that historically doesn't make any sense. How can germany britain france and Spain all pick a path that's historically accurate in a game? The lack of real world maps and historical scenarios also shows that firaxis simply didn't care about the people who wanted to play the game for historical accuracy.

Just my opinion and the reasons I'm not interested in the game at this point.

 

[King Flevance]

What really gets me is that this game appears to have had the longest development cycle than any previous title. (Released 8 years after Civ 6) Now, it is possible that in those 8 years they were just pumping out DLC for 6 and not really working on 7. However, Gathering Storm released 6 years ago so I would assume this game had 5-6 years of development time. If not, they should have certainly calmed down on all these ambitious changes. Civ has long had a reputation in the gaming community that the consumer gets a better value if you just wait and let them work out the bugs/balance due to poor releases. It used to be that waiting for the expansions were the better value because you got more product for the same price. It is truly the fans of the series who are willing to bite the bullet and risk that maybe THIS time they will release a good product but be OK with it if it falls short.

You can tell they scaled the game down for release to be smoother. No maps above standard size & slower speeds were broken on release. It was released for you to be required to play smaller & faster games. This should have allowed them to polish but that was missing as well. It is a very disappointing release. Scaled back and unpolished.

I knew going into buying the Deluxe Edition that I would probably get burned somehow. I hoped not, but I was prepared for it as I am a long time fan of this franchise. And I do want to support it but this relationship is 1-sided and I won't pretend it isn't. Currently, they already have my money and now I have a game that needs a LOT of attention with patches for me to enjoy it for years to come because it was not worth its price the day of transaction. I went in knowing this was the most likely scenario though. But it is important to recognize that even if they do fulfill their end eventually, this is not good business practices. If you bought any other product and got something that didn't work as intended but rather a promise that it will work properly within the next year or 2, you would not be willing to argue that is acceptable business. Somehow, with games we consumers accept this.

Maybe some of us actually could play Civ 7 -as is- for years and love it. But I suspect that is a very small number of us. I also suspect many of us do not think this is the most likely outcome.

We have seen some games like No Man's Sky, Diablo 3, Fallout 76, etc. redeem a tragic launch. However, there are also games where a poor launch couldn't recover but so far no Civ title has suffered that fate.. This next patch I feel will be telling of Civ 7's future. If they knew of these issues people dislike at launch, they should have already been addressing them behind the scenes for a future patch when the game launched. While I am happy for Sukritact to have found a job probably doing what he loves, part of me has to wonder if they hired him as an appreciation for his quick help or if they needed to so that they can quickly do damage control by absorbing his work on the state of this release. If they wanted him, great. If they needed him, that's a problem.


In short, Civ 7 could totally recover from this, and it even has a likely probability that it will. But this release is rough and it is understandable for sales to be dropping with these issues that actually can make the game difficult or unfun to play. Especially, considering the polish of this title is below the standard of AAA strategy game releases both in terms of the UI and that they needed to hotfix major mechanics like game speed and a victory condition. This would make sense if it were early access or a small game studio but this is an official release of a market leader. I do have a lot of hope for the future of this title but currently I have found myself already starting to prefer to load up my other titles that I don't have to forgive around every corner.

 

[acquiredlizard]

What really gets me is that this game appears to have had the longest development cycle than any previous title. (Released 8 years after Civ 6) Now, it is possible that in those 8 years they were just pumping out DLC for 6 and not really working on 7. However, Gathering Storm released 6 years ago so I would assume this game had 5-6 years of development time. If not, they should have certainly calmed down on all these ambitious changes. Civ has long had a reputation in the gaming community that the consumer gets a better value if you just wait and let them work out the bugs/balance due to poor releases. It used to be that waiting for the expansions were the better value because you got more product for the same price. It is truly the fans of the series who are willing to bite the bullet and risk that maybe THIS time they will release a good product but be OK with it if it falls short.

You can tell they scaled the game down for release to be smoother. No maps above standard size & slower speeds were broken on release. It was released for you to be required to play smaller & faster games. This should have allowed them to polish but that was missing as well. It is a very disappointing release. Scaled back and unpolished.

I think a huge factor in it being scaled down + unpolished was the decision to develop it for simultaneous release across PC and consoles. That changed everything about the development cycle

One significant metric we don’t have access to is the split of sales across consoles vs. PC. If it’s lopsided, like 70% consoles/30% PC, that will influence a lot. And is the sentiment of console players the same, better, or worse than the sentiment of PC players? Are they buying DLC at lower or higher rates, playing the game in different ways, showing signs of being a stickier player base? It’s not impossible 2k could see signs there’s upside in how the console market is responding and more optimistic about structuring future development/updates first-and-foremast around the preferences/play styles of console players

Regardless, I find it highly unlikely 2k is happy about all the early metrics we can see. I’d guess they’re in a ‘worried but not full freak out’ mode. If the DLCs over the next year receive poor sales across all platforms + the first major DLC overhaul doesn’t initially spike the player base and lead to a significantly higher, stickier daily player base then I think they enter full freak out mode

 

[99-percent-sure]

This game appears to have had the longest development cycle than any previous title. (Released 8 years after Civ 6) Now, it is possible that in those 8 years they were just pumping out DLC for 6 and not really working on 7.

I believe they started hiring staff to work on Civ 7 in the middle of 2023, so I think it's only been in meaningful development for 2-3 years. The wish list thread on this forum was started in August 2023 around the time the news broke that Firaxis was hiring people for this project.

Also, Humankind was released in the second half of 2021, and it would seem Civ VII must have been conceptualized after that given the clear influences of that game.

 

[Qiubov]

And yet they have even more data on their end—data which is unavailable to the purchaser, or discussants on an internet forum. Any meaningful discussion beyond sentiment is improbable without that, because it'd be like trying to discuss problems of physics without a knowledge of algebra.

The problem therein is that our ability as consumers to influence a product is vastly overestimated. We have no access to the process of production itself, no means by which to make a direct intervention beyond the site of consumption. While the developers certainly are monitoring these forums (and elsewhere)—they post here even—they have already said they are working on improving it. What more is there to say beyond that? If they improve it they will, and if they don't, they don't. We can continue to have these circular conversations that go nowhere, again because of our lack of access to production itself, and the limitations even of our language surrounding said production, or we can wait for things to actually happen.

As I've said before, these conversations don't reflect any actual ability to determine, in a direct and measurable way, our influence on game development. Instead it reflects both our anxieties about preferred consumer products—and our ability to anticipate them in the future—and more broadly, anxieties about our overall lack of agency in our political and economic lives. We argue about games and insist on our influence in a republic of consumers (Lizabeth Cohen, 2003) because we feel we lack an ability to affect the political factors that govern our lives, in a political economy fundamentally intertwined with consumer goods production. It will not necessarily go anywhere, but debating it online makes us feel like we are active players in a bigger economic ecosystem.

You make excellent points.

Forums, like these, often become echo chambers, reinforcing emotional investment but rarely translating directly into tangible changes. But I will say that echo chambers are important for products/games to a certain extent, because if consumers did not express their dissatisfaction, then nothing would ever change. So I see value even in the posts here that profess great disappointment in the game, they inform to the overall sentiment and that's important.

Maybe we do overestimate our influence as consumers. And maybe those who like or dislike the game have entered into unending debate to validate both opposing positions. But I do genuinely believe that forums like this one are key datapoints to product teams. As are Steam reviews. I know that's what I would do if I was in their position. But it depends on the type of data. Discussions regarding the game being a failure or a success wouldn't be good datapoints for me. Instead I'd be looking for suggestions, ideas, tweaks to the existing mechanics that could resonate with a wider customer base. But nothing too radical - it's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the player base resonate with Civ7 and any dramatic changes could exacerbate the situation further.

 

[j51]

Someone on like Twitter pointed out that Luigi Mangione worked on UI bug fixes for Civ VI back in the day and asked: “I just have to know what happened to the ui/ux designers at firaxis between civ6 and civ7?”

They make a good point. What was going on in ui/ux there?

 

[ThERat]

Nobody claimed it, as far as I remember. But yeah, I failed to prove I didn't write things I didn't write back then in many messages. Not going to continue.

Lots and lots of people claimed that more than half of the complaints were about Tubman and Lovelace, the other half was about the UI and once the review bombers are done, the UI improved, the review ratings would surely go up.

The opposite is happening until right now. No more review bombing (if there was any at all to start with), nobody cares about the game being woke or not (in my mind it is not, Firaxis wanted to show how inclusive they are and then designed a second age that has asks you to colonize a second continent, a direct slap into the face of those, they wanted to include) and then all of a sudden, the apologists realize that people do not like the core game. Now, like true politicians, they claim, numbers are not what they are, it's too early etc etc. Quite funny to watch

 

[Thormodr]

This is a very bold claim with nothing to back it up. A negative review in no way means that the person does not enjoy the game. And the vast majority of owners has not left a review anyway. So, maybe just keep your negativity to yourself and let the people that actually have the game and enjoy let them do this? Criticism of the game is fine, especially if it is constructive, but always pretending that your subjective opinion would in any way be a ground truth or a majority opinion really doesn't help taking you seriously.

That's a rather strange viewpoint. There certainly is enough about the game that they don't enjoy that they'd give a negative review. So there is a clear lack of enjoyment.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Lots and lots of people claimed that more than half of the complaints were about Tubman and Lovelace, the other half was about the UI and once the review bombers are done, the UI improved, the review ratings would surely go up.

This particular comment was about a story on this forum. To give some context:

Within steam reviews there was small, but very aggressive set of authors accusing game of being woke. There also were some small set of reviewers who thought the majority of criticism being anti-woke (not necessary openly, some people could dislike the game for "wokeness", but write negative review about UI).

So, then we were discussing negative reviews, I mentioned anti-woke crowd as one of potential reasons at the bottom of some list, without claiming anything. This caused quite a bit of s**tstorm and several people on this forum in many messages tried to convince me how I was wrong and me trying to convince them I didn't say that they thought I said.

So, those are the ripples of that discussion.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That's a rather strange viewpoint. There certainly is enough about the game that they don't enjoy that they'd give a negative review. So there is a clear lack of enjoyment.

People give reviews when they feel strong emotions. For negative review the trigger is often frustration - from not getting the game they wanted, UI preventing them from doing something or just abrupt end of the age when you was about to capture a city. But having strong negative trigger really doesn't always mean the person don't enjoy the game in other time.

However, based on ChatGPT analysis, we could see that positive reviews acknowledge game problems, while negative reviews are often strictly negative. This could mean significant amount of people really not enjoy the game at all, but it's still a matter of interpretation. Based on review text only it's really hard to say.